1. Learn how to salt food properly. Brown says, "Professionals don't necessarily use a lot of salt, but they taste their food while cooking and add salt at several different times, which really changes the chemistry of the food and changes — and if done right, improves — the way food tastes."

2. Proper heat management. "Americans are notorious for not getting things hot enough. We seem to be afraid of getting oil hot enough, pans hot enough. People say, 'Oh, it started to smoke.' Well, that's what happens. Kitchens are smoky places."

3. Weigh your ingredients. "Going by weight instead of volume is much more precise, and it produces better, more consistent results."

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Such details and adjustments often mean the difference between good dish and a great dish, says Brown. The Food Network personality is known for his dry, quirky and sometimes prickly wit as the host of programs that include "Iron Chef America" and "Cutthroat Kitchen" and for the food-science exactitude of his series "Good Eats," which ran for 14 seasons and more than 250 episodes on Food Network and Cooking Channel.

Brown will be bringing his first tour, "Alton Brown Live!," to Proctors in Schenectady for one performance next Thursday, Feb. 13. Begun last fall, the 45-date tour is modeled after the live variety shows of Milton Berle and others in the early years of television.

"I wanted to do a true variety show, just one that focuses all around food," Brown says, chatting on the phone from his home in Atlanta. It includes what he describes as two "really big, very impressive new food demos," one involving extreme cold, the other extreme heat; the puppets, science and skit humor of "Good Eats"; audience interaction; and original food-themed songs written by Brown, with titles such as "Airport Shrimp Blues" and "TV Cookin Ain't Like No Other Cookin."

"The demos probably should not be attempted at home," says Brown. "One of them sometimes makes a mess, which is why we have a poncho zone (for audiences seated near the stage). I don't try to make a mess, but sometimes these things just get away from you."

Brown starts each performance with a warning characteristic of his personality, which detractors perceive as arrogance, but fans appreciate as wit and self-confidence.

He tells the audience, "'The show has been completely designed for my pleasure, not (yours).' I'm completely honest with them: The show is mostly stuff that no one would let me do on TV that I still want to do anyway, and now that I've got them in the seats, I'm going to do it. I hope they enjoy it, but the truth is, it's for my pleasure."

Although Brown has been mulling the idea of a tour for nearly a decade, it came together only last year, when he could fit it into his schedule and when he found a producing partner with sensibilities complementary to his own.

"Iron Chef America," of which Brown is the host and principal commentator, shoots a year's worth of episodes, two a day for three weeks in July, and "Cutthroat Kitchen" tapes a 13-week season in California, also over three weeks. The live tour is produced with MagicSpace Entertainment, which also has created tours for magician David Copperfield, the Beatles tribute called "Rain" and the live stage show starring hosts of the "MythBusters" series on Discovery.

"I'm really picky about how I wanted it," Brown says. "Once we found them, I knew we could do it the way I wanted it. ... I'm sorry I didn't get there first" — with a live stage variety show about food – "but hopefully I've done it better than everybody else."